Question

When I triple my number and add five, I get eleven. What is my number?

Answer 1

The answer is 2. You can solve this by working backwards...
Start with 11 then subtract 5. Then you will get 6 and then you can divide by 3. Which will get you 2.

Answer 2

The first part of solving this is to translate this into an algebraic equation. So you tripled your number (3x), added five ( + 5), and it equalled eleven ( = 11). Now, put it all together and solve it to get the number.

3x + 5 = 11 Subtract 5 from both sides
3x = 6 Divide both sides by 3
x = 2

Your number is 2.